DailyMTG.com 2013 Q1 Editorial Calendar

Trick JarrettFriday, January 18, 2013

ast year, we ran an experiment where I shared DailyMTG's upcoming theme weeks. Whereas, previously, theme weeks had been kept secret until they arrived, we decided to see how the community would react and make use of this information.

What we found was a plethora of Magic sites hopping on board and taking part in the planned schedule for theme weeks. From individual blogs to the largest Magic websites out there, they joined us in recognizing and discussing the guilds of Return to Ravnica. Once again, we are asking you all to join us as we discuss the Gatecrash guilds.

To be honest, I wasn't sure I would share this round of theme weeks with you all. While adoption and interest had been strong, there was one note of criticism I heard from a number of individuals. That is, with a theme shared across sites, authors on different sites tended to talk about the same things, the same deck ideas, the same cards. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, and going into this I knew it was a risk, but I believed the community would self-organize and self-correct.

This is the sort of problem that there's no easy way to manage. Either we make the weeks available and accept crossover, or I choose to not give the theme weeks and the community is left to fend for itself on the themes. I went back and forth on it a number of times, asking people both within Wizards of the Coast and outside for their input. In the end, I decided that for at least the sake of completeness, I would put out the theme weeks for all of Gatecrash, and then we'll reevaluate whether we want to do it for Dragon's Maze or not.

I hope authors will either communicate more about their writing intentions or purposefully seek niches that will allow them to cover unique topics and decks that still hold to the themes.